Dividends.
Resnick parked his car in the forecourt of the pub, hoping that his cats would forgive him for not calling home first to feed them. But he didn’t think this would take very long. A double-decker bus, fitted out with narrow tables between the seats, stood alongside the location catering van. The remnants of the evening’s salads clung to the edges of large bowls; trays of fruit and cheese stood close to urns of tea and coffee. Jam roly-poly said the board by the serving hatch, bread-and-butter pudding. There was the unmistakable smell of chip fat over everything.
Resnick tapped on the window of a transit van bearing the Midlands TV logo. The driver lifted the open pages of the Sun from his face and wound the window down.
“Harold Roy,” Resnick said. “I’m looking for him.”
There was something familiar about the driver, but he couldn’t place what it was.
The man squinted out towards the close streets of the Broxtowe Estate. “In there.”
“Thanks,” said Resnick and waited while the window was raised and the newspaper returned to its previous position. He stepped over the low fencing and across the main road. The constable in his uniform overcoat, diverting traffic, recognized Resnick by sight and stepped clear of the four or five small children who were hanging round him.
“Evening, sir. Didn’t know you were out this way.”
“I’m not.”
“Right, sir.”
“Hope they’re paying your overtime for this.”
“Yes, sir.”
Resnick left him entertaining his kindergarten. The oldest of them wasn’t more than ten and most would be there until the pubs had closed.
Two more vans were parked at the curb, inside which the artists played cards, filled in crosswords, read, waited their calls. Thick cables ran to and from a third van, close to the corner. Arc lights had been set up on stands and just outside their beam, groups of men stood around in donkey jackets, rubbing their gloved hands together, smoking. Resnick was reminded of photographs he’d seen of the general strike.
A young woman wearing a harassed expression and a violent blue bomber jacket bounced past Resnick in red baseball boots with white stars at their sides. Embroidered on to the center of the jacket’s back was a fist with the middle finger thrusting skywards.
“Naomi!” she spat in the walkie-talkie in her hand. “I want Laurence here and I want him now!”
There was a squawked reply that Resnick failed to understand.
“You!” she said, pointing hard at Resnick. Each finger of her glove was a different, bright color. “Get back behind the van. Back!”
“I’m looking for …”
“Back!”
Resnick raised an eyebrow and turned towards the van. As he did so, the man he had seen earlier behind the wheel of the red Citroën threw back the sliding door and jumped out. Harold Roy was wearing a waist-length blue jacket and brown leather boots beneath his designer jeans. A white scarf spiraled round the collar of a red wool shirt.
“Chris, would you mind telling me what in God’s name we’re waiting for? This shot’s been lit and ready for the last fifteen minutes.”
“Laurence,” said the girl, the evenness of her voice scarcely disguising her antagonism.
“What about him?”
“He’s changing his costume.”
“Now? Now he’s changing his costume? Half an hour after he’s been called?”
“We didn’t have any choice. Continuity.”
“Well, if costumes didn’t spend the entire day with their heads up each other’s arses, they might have noticed that sooner.”
“It’s being taken care of, Harold. It’s in hand.”
“I don’t want him in hand, I want him here, now.”
“On his way.”
“Now?”
“Now.”
Harold Roy took a couple of steps back and looked around; some of the crew and the extras had been watching the exchange, most were carrying on with their conversations or simply standing motionless, leaning against something, bored.
“Next thing we know,” Harold announced to everyone and no one, “Mackenzie’s going to be asked why we’re behind schedule again. And I’m going to make sure the blame for that goes where it belongs.”
Chris turned her back on him and walked away, letting her embroidered finger make her reply.
She came back towards the lights a few moments later with an actor Resnick recognized from a coffee commercial. A slim man with a ponytail, wearing a shiny black jumpsuit, bustled behind them, pulling stray threads from the back of the actor’s jacket.
“All right everybody, positions please.”
Harold Roy slid the van door shut behind him. Resnick didn’t think it was the best moment to go and talk to him about his house being burgled.
“Hallo,” said the voice at the other end of the phone.
“Hallo.” Maria was watching Dallas on TV. Why didn’t her precious Harold ever get anything like that to work on?
“Hallo,” the voice repeated.
“Who is this?” Maria asked. The voice was familiar and she wondered if it was somebody from the studio, maybe even the producer. “Is that Mac?” she asked. Theodore James Mackenzie was the producer and originator of Dividends; when he was in a good mood he liked to be called Mac.
“No.” A pause. “You know who this is.”
Then she did. She spun around and leaned her head back against the wall. “You’ll never keep John Ross from me!” Sue Ellen was screaming at JR from the heart of their rented twenty-four-inch FST Sony.
“You do know, don’t you?”
Her hand less than steady, Maria set down the receiver.
Laurence had to walk ten yards along the pavement, look at his watch under the streetlight, walk another five yards, look up towards the bedroom windows of the semi-detached brick house and say: “Cheryl, you’re going to wish you’d never turned me out of your bed, so help me!”
It wasn’t Dallas, but it was trying, just not very hard.
He seemed to be required to repeat this a great many times and after the first few, Resnick wandered back to have a word with the constable on traffic duty.
“How much longer?” Resnick asked.
The officer checked his watch. “Won’t be above an hour, sir, you can be pretty sure of that.”
“Work to time, do they?”
“On the dot. Five, four, three, two, one, someone pulls the plug.”
“Not like some then,” said Resnick with a faint smile. “In need of a little time and half to ease the mortgage payments.”
“Bought a caravan with mine, sir-miners’ strike. Over at Ingoldmells. Get up in the morning and pull back the curtain and the only thing in view is the sea. Unless there’s a mist.”
“But not here?” Resnick persisted.
“Don’t think it’s so much the cash, sir. More a case of good will.”
“Good will?”
“Doesn’t seem to be a lot of it about.”
Resnick nodded and took a couple of paces away. Two of the undernourished kids who’d been tugging at the constable’s uniform trousers and trying to dribble spittle down on to his boots without him noticing were shifting their attention.
“You on telly?” one of them asked Resnick. He had a bright, liverish flare on one cheek, burn or birth mark, it was impossible to tell which.
Resnick shook his head.
“Told you!” said his friend, whose hair had been cropped so short it was possible to see the scabs across his scalp.
“He’s lying! You’re lying, aren’t you, mister? I’ve seen you.”
“No,” said Resnick, turning away.
“Go on,” shouted the boy with the blemish, “tell us.”
“I should watch out if I were you,” said the constable. “He’s a police officer. Detective inspector.”
Resnick gave him a quick look that said, thanks very much.
“He your boss, is he?”
“Not exactly.”
“Bet he is. Hey, mister, order him about, tell him what to do.”
“I’ll tell you what to do and that’s clear off from here. Scram.” The constable shooed the lads away with his hands and they skipped out of his reach, off to where the crew were standing around, to scrounge cigarettes.